


Back To Berlin

by tonytonesphoneroo5000



Category: Atomic Blonde (2017)
Genre: Berlin - Freeform, F/F, Gray Morality, Lorraine Is Not A Good or Bad Person, Uneasy Allies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-30
Updated: 2017-12-30
Packaged: 2019-02-24 00:17:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13201626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tonytonesphoneroo5000/pseuds/tonytonesphoneroo5000
Summary: Two months after the shitshow with Percival and MI6, Lorraine is back in Berlin.This time, she has Merkel with her, a silent shadow at her back. She isn’t sure about him yet; he’s young, too intense to be easily trusted. Not that she trusts easily, ever. Not that she really trusts at all.





	Back To Berlin

**Author's Note:**

> hey guys i liked atomic blonde tho i didn't like that happened to delphine :( also if you live in berlin i'm sure it's lovely there so don't believe what the characters say lol also this is definitely a friendship fic not a romantic thing

Two months after the shitshow with Percival and MI6, Lorraine is back in Berlin.

This time, she has Merkel with her, a silent shadow at her back. She isn’t sure about him yet; he’s young, too intense to be easily trusted. Not that she trusts easily, ever. Not that she really trusts at all. 

They set up in the same hotel room, although the beds are very deliberately separate. This isn’t fucking James Bond, she already tried that whole spy lovers thing with Delphine and look how that turned out. Besides, he’s not her type.

She’s here as an American, finally, with dark hair this time. Personally, she looks better as a blonde. 

They go to sleep immediately, both of them sliding a gun under their pillow. Lorraine doesn’t sleep the first night; neither, she assumes, does Merkel. At some point he gets up, leaves for twenty minutes, comes back and slides into bed like he didn’t expect her to notice he was ever gone. She’s a fucking _spy_. 

She flicks the light on, catches the smell of cigarettes wafting towards her. He’s wide-eyed and blinking, cheeks flushed. She raises an eyebrow. “Where were you?”

“Needed a smoke,” he says, shrugging his jacket off. Lorraine would kill him right now, but she did that on her last mission and Control was…less than pleased.

“You’re a fucking psychopath, Lorraine, and we like that, but keep it under control,” was their exact words. And something about him reminds her of Delphine. The casual sex appeal, maybe. 

“I don’t like being lied to,” she says evenly, holding his hooded eyes.

“You’re a fuckin’ spy, yeah? Who’re you to judge people for lying, hypocrite?” Despite herself, Lorraine smiles. Her hand drifts towards her gun. His eyes follow the movement. “Okay. _Okay_.” His hands are up, palms out, and he’s so _young_. Again she’s reminded of Delphine, though in a different way, and she hates herself for it. “I was jerking off.”

The look on his face is so uncomfortable that Lorraine believes him. She laughs.   
*  
She’d loved James Gasciogne, in her own peculiar way. She’d lied to him throughout their whole relationship, of course. But she’d loved him. 

Delphine was…different. Delphine was a future she only got a taste of. Delphine made her feel human for the first time in fucking ages. She tries not to think about Delphine, and fails every time.   
*  
For the first week they’re in Berlin, Merkel comes home with a succession of pretty boys, all blonde, all with the same baffled look, like they can’t believe they’re doing this even as they kiss him. Lorraine, politely, leaves the room. 

After the fifth boy, she pins him up against the doorway and smiles and smiles and smiles as she says, “If you get distracted from the mission, I’ll kill you.”

He smiles back, smug as any crocodile, and says, “You know how we’re after a double agent? A real one, this time.” 

She scoffs; of course she does, and she doesn’t need him laying out the parameters. “Yes.”

The breath of laughter he huffs out smells of the cigarettes he smokes constantly. “The man has a fondness for blondes.” She lets him go, steps back; he’s apparently unruffled and unoffended. Lorraine thinks to herself that he’s probably one of the smartest men she’s ever met, and isn’t sure if she likes that. She is sure that she’s worried. She’s not good at planning; she’s good at lying, and killing people. 

Finally, she shrugs. “Gasciogne would’ve liked you,” she says, pushing the hair away from her face. He too had a fondness for pretty boys, and using his looks to get information. 

“But would I have liked him?” Merkel asks.

She snorts. “Yes, obviously, you fucking ponce.” The British still comes to her, sometimes, slipping in and out of her sentences without meaning. His grin is wide and crooked. Gasciogne would’ve liked that, too.

*  
By the second week, they’re making headway, and they’re not friends, but they’re not…Lorraine can let herself relax, sometimes, as much as she’s capable of. She can turn her back to him when she sleeps. 

They find their way up to the rooftop sometimes and sit there, watching the Berlin sign turn on the building they used to stay in, blocks away. They don’t talk much; what is there to talk about? 

She still dreams about Gasciogne and Delphine, their faces a confusing mixture, their blood on her hands. Lorraine has never dealt well with guilt, as she rarely feels it. Rarely feels much. Still, it’s almost pleasant, to be so peaceful.   
*  
During the third week, she gets caught going through sensitive files in a senator’s office and has to fight her way out, has to beat a man to death with his own suitcase until his head is a pulp and her hands are a mess of gore, one of his eyes dangling loosely from the socket. Lorraine has done much worse.

But the fight is difficult, and messy, and she manages to find her way back to the hotel where she takes an icy shower and sits on the bed in just pants and a bra, bruises painting their way across her ribs, over the bridge of her nose and her knuckles. 

She’s wrapping them when Merkel walks in, wearing _her_ coat. It looks good on him. “What happened?” he asks, dropping his packages to the floor, striding over to inspect her face, take her chin in one hand. 

Usually, she’d snap at being patronized, but it seems that this comes from real care; she’s reminded of him watching over her after the accident with Spyglass, when she was shivering and disoriented and as vulnerable as she gets. In another life, he would’ve made a good nurse.

“Berlin happened,” she murmurs, brushing his hand away. She’s had worse. 

The rage spreading across his face is unexpected, makes her sit up. “Berlin is shit,” he spits, fists clenching. “Berlin is a monster eating itself alive.” Lorraine thinks of Delphine, who wanted to be a poet or a rockstar but ended up strangled in a shitty motel, and has to agree.   
*  
By the fourth week, they’ve caught the double agent. A scrawny, pathetic little thing who begs for his life as Lorraine kicks his teeth in; she might as well, they’re going to need to remove them so he can’t be identified by dental records anyway. Merkel watches, impassive, from the corner of their hotel room. 

“Please, I needed…” They always need something, and Lorraine never cares. She kills him, neck snapped, and wraps him up in the bloody sheets.

She almost expects Merkel to get queasy at this part, but his hands are steady as they bundle the double agent’s body into the trunk of a rental car and dump it in the streets; a warning, mostly. A threat. 

Finished, she allows herself a smoke as they drive towards the airport, borrows one from Merkel. “Everyone who gets close to you dies,” Percival had said before she killed him. He was probably right. She smiles over at Merkel anyway. 

“I’d work with you again.” He blinks once, surprised, but smiles back. Lorraine thinks, that if she had to kill him, it would be a damn shame. And that’s as close to affection as she gets.


End file.
